Top 8 Under-Rated Areas In Canadian Philately

The collecting of booklets is an often overlooked area partly because albums typically don't include spaces for them, and partly because they are listed in the back of the catalogue. However, the products available to house collections safely has evolved to the point where there are lots of easy solutions for safely storing and displaying a collection of booklets. 

There are several aspects to booklets issued in Canada that make them a very interesting and challenging field in which to specialize. The first is that prior to the mid 1950's booklets were issued either in English of French versions. Starting in the 1940's bilingual versions also became available. While the English versions of most booklets are not particularly rare, the quantities issued of most French booklets is extremely limited indeed, with fewer than 100,000  being produced for several of these issues. Many have been mis-handled over the years, with the result that finding clean, crisp examples of many of the pre 1950's booklets can be very difficult. 

In addition to this, the cover designs on most booklets issued between 1935 and 1955 consist of a dot pattern that has been studied and found to exist in several die types. These type differences are found on both the front cover and the back cover of most booklets and usually most booklets could be found in all four possible front and back cover combinations. Sometimes there were many more die types than just two. When you consider that many of these also exist in English, French and bilingual versions, you can begin to appreciate just how extensive and challenging a specialized collection of booklets can become. The first five or so booklets are very expensive, but not compared to stamps of comparable rarity. However, many scarce to rare booklets are worth little in comparison to what many stamps that are far more common are selling for. 

Plate blocks are another thing that you see all over the place in discount postage lots. In fact plate blocks have gotten such a bad rap over the years that many have forgotten that the plate blocks of yesteryear served a very different purpose and had a completely different significance to the plate blocks of today. 

First of all, the term "plate block" is a bit of a misnomer for nearly all issues after 1971, as different plates were not used for issues printed by lithography or photogravure, which is nearly every stamp issue by then. Different printing plates were generally only used for issues printed using steel engraving, or a combination of engraving or some other process, and even then, usually only for definitive issues. Most commemoratives had only a single print run, so the resulting blocks are most properly termed "inscription blocks". Furthermore, they are generally readily available, because all four corners of most philatelic sheets now bear the inscriptions. 

However prior to the early 1970's this was not the case. Back then, the sheet layouts consisted of between four and six panes of 50 or 100 subjects. So usually only the outer panes would contain a plate inscription, which in turn would mean that in order to obtain all four corners, it would be necessary to sacrifice four sheets. This meant that there was actually some challenge and resulting scarcity to collectors looking to obtain a complete set of plate blocks for an issue. In addition, all issues prior to 1963 were line perforated, rather than comb perforated. This meant that each row was perforated separately, which in turn meant that obtaining very well centered blocks is a challenge. 

Often the plate block is the only way to study the different paper and shade varieties in which an issue exists and to know for certain, which printings came first, and which ones came later.  Finally, while most issues from about 1935-1963 are readily available as plate blocks, finding high quality plate blocks for issues from 1870-1935 is very difficult and is getting harder all the time, as some dealers break up blocks to harvest superbly centered VFNH singles from them. 

The collecting of used multiples, especially strips and blocks has been popular in Europe for a long time, with the specialized catalogues recognizing the immense rarity of many otherwise common stamps that are in multiple form. It is difficult enough to locate used stamps that are fault free and stuck with attractive, in-period postmarks. But that problem becomes exponentially greater as soon as you try finding a similar block. One of the reasons for this is that most legitimately used blocks were used on parcels and received heavy cancellations. In addition many blocks were not fully affixed to the envelope or parcel, or they were affixed carelessly resulting in creases or wrinkles. 

In addition stamp catalogues have been slow to include pricing information for this type of material, with the result that few, if any dealers have maintained any stock of this material to speak of. Sure, you will find the odd block here and there, but I highly doubt that you will come across any large stock of this material. I once sold a nice used block of 6 of the 1963 Export Dollar definitive with a nice 1965 CDS cancel for over $50 and the catalogue value of 6 singles is only $18, or $21. That was five or six years ago now. However, the upside remains strong for a forward looking philatelist to do very well collecting choice used blocks of any period. The key though is to look for CDS cancellations that are in the correct period. For definitives that generally means from the date of issue until the next definitive  for the same equivalent postage rate is released. For commemoratives, that generally means 6-9 months from the time of issue. So, for example the period of use for the 1c Macdonald  Caricature definitive is from its issuance in 1973 until it was replaced by the 1c Bottle Gentian definitive in 1977. 

Most Newfoundland material is readily available because the demand historically has been lower for it, which I believe is due to the fact that it is located after the main Canadian issues in nearly every Canadian stamp album. Were these issues to be integrated within the main layout of every Canadian stamp album, I believe we would see a very different picture emerge as to demand. The stamps of this former colony are generally very scarce, with fewer than 10,000 sets being issued in many cases for many of its issues. The stamps are attractive, beautifully engraved and offer a lovely range of shade, paper, perforation and watermark varieties. They are especially difficult and challenging  to find with the cancellations of small Newfoundland towns and villages. I firmly believe that as demand for classic stamps continues to increase, we are going to see prices for this material increase to the point that it will be hard for many people to believe that much of the material could, at one time be had for today's prices. 

Complete sheets have, for a long time been sold for postage, and the older ones broken up by dealers, due to a lack of demand by collectors. This is largely due to the fact that traditional, letter-sized 8.5" x 11" pages could simply not accommodate most sheets. However, times have changed and many solutions now exist which allow collectors to collect and attractively display full sheets. There is something majestic about a full sheet, with its full border and inscriptions all the way around. In addition, since the early 1970's with the advent of se-tenant designs, full sheets give a visual effect that disappears the minute the sheet is broken up. For example, many issues are printed in a checkerboard fashion or in rotation, so that a cross pattern or some other bold pattern is formed by the stamps themselves - something that you simply cannot get by collecting individual stamps. 

Another reason that sheets may become a lot better in the future is that so many of them have been broken up that many are becoming genuinely scarce to rare. Finally, many of the better paper varieties are found on field stock panes, which are often not kept intact.  This last point requires a bit of explanation. Back in the 1950's if you were a collector and you wanted to buy from the post office, you got in line with everyone else and bought them from the postal worker at the wicket. Thus philatelists and the public obtained their stamps from the same source. But at some point Canada Post established a philatelic bureau to serve collectors directly. From that point on, separate printings were made of panes containing plate blocks in all four corners and sent to the philatelic bureau. Usually, only one printing was made for this purpose, so that nearly all of the philatelic stock is generally only found on the most common paper type. Many of the better, scarcer paper types have only come to light when specialists have discovered them in their study of the field stock panes.

Unfortunately many of the field stock sheets have been broken up before their significance was well understood, with the result that many of the scarcer paper types no longer exist in full sheets. This is still a relatively new field in Canadian philately and although many discoveries have been made over the years, there are still more discoveries to be made for sure.

Modern Paper Varieties

Up until 1983 most of the modern issues after about 1971 were printed on a chalk-surfaced paper manufactured by a company called Abitibi-Price. In 1983 Abitibi-Price went out of business and Canada Post was forced to seek out alternate paper suppliers. Quite a number of suppliers have been utilized since then including:

• Harrison
• Slater
• Rolland
• Peterborough
• Coated papers
• Clark